So I finally was able to get beyond the block that was driving me crazy. My meditation practice helped me do this. I started watching my thoughts when I was thinking about painting but not doing it. And I noticed that I was telling myself all these negative things that were keeping me paralyzed. I was thinking that it was a fluke that I had produced paintings that people wanted to buy in the past and that I would never be able to do it again and if I put brush to canvas, I would just make mistake after mistake until I would give up. It's inevitable. That's what my thoughts were telling me. And so I had to watch those thoughts and not get caught up in them. I found this a struggle, a really hard struggle. And finally, I just forced myself to start painting in the midst of the thoughts chattering away in my head.
And once I started the painting, the process itself began to take over. That's not to say that I didn't make lots of mistakes. I did. But it became easier and easier to not get overwhelmed by the mistakes but just realize that making the mistakes is part of the process. So make the mistakes and then paint over them and replace them with something I like better.
Here is a detail of the painting: the center of the tree. I especially like the cat drooped over the branch at the upper right and the cat and squirrel playing at the bottom left.
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